28 Warning Signs Your Loved One Is A Music Gear Guy
Not all hobbies are meant to replace an actual personality.
By Brian Hastie (italics) and Jon Kekarainen Cicioli (not italics)
It was Christmas of 2007.
My (Jon’s) dear mother had decided to bestow upon me the gift of an electric guitar, an item I had been growing more and more fascinated with.
This gift came at a monumental moment in our modern history: Two cultural forces would cross over within my personal life—one in decline, the other in its early stages of influence.
In 2007, guitar music as a whole was beginning to decline. As a teenager primarily obsessed with ‘80s thrash metal, this would not become apparent to me for several more years. Rock music was the music of an older generation and there were fewer and fewer young converts.
At this time, mallcore (the more accessible form of “emo”) was the soundtrack of the youth. But not all youth… Some kids preferred hip-hop, others were into techno, and some would simply listen to what was popular, filling their iPods with what was on the radio or whatever songs went viral (damn you, Crazy Frog).
Even within the kids into rock music, you’d seldom find people with your specific tastes. One kid would really be into RHCP, another inheriting their father’s Guns ‘N’ Roses and Zeppelin worship, while you were knee-deep into Slayer and the Ramones. (Kids at my school were also obsessed with AC/DC and Bryan Adams, for some strange reason.) Nobody was really on the same page, and the idea of rock as a single cohesive genre was slowly crumbling. That’s where the second cultural force came into play…
The second force was one we still spend a lot of time with.
YouTube was launched in 2005 and bought out by Google a year later. Although it was far from the juggernaut it is today, it provided a place where any young wannabe musician could find content about their kind of music.
This mostly included guitar covers you’d try to emulate to learn how to play the songs that spoke to you. The comments section also made you feel like you weren’t the only person in the world who was really into whatever you liked in the world.
When you make music (or are learning how to), it’s normal to obsess over what equipment you're using. You try to emulate what your favorite artists use while being limited to the budget your weekend part-time fast food job provides you. You don’t know any better. Your barometer for taste isn’t yet refined…
But as you grow older, you realize that the most important part of playing an instrument is the joy of learning and creating something new while developing a sense of discipline that keeps you practicing.
But that’s not what we’re talking about today. We’re discussing…
The Music Gear Guy
A music gear guy is a combination of the demeanor of the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons and the artistic frustrations of every failed musician working a job that doesn’t involve music or sound design in any way. Best-case scenario, they managed to find gainful (if unfulfilling) employment and have resorted to simply throwing money at a hobby.
Many corporate lawyers and CPAs are the cornerstones of the Gibson Custom Shop’s bottom line.
It happens all the time at music stores. It’s like watching a hapless middle-aged guy going to the strip club with a money gun full of 20 dollar bills, only it’s a guy picking what color starburst he wants on his new “baby”.
They’ll shell out several thousands of dollars on a new Les Paul reissue just to play some half-assed Stevie Ray Vaughn licks from the comfort of their basement. In other cases, it's a dude (96% of these people are men for some reason) who lives in his parent’s basement working a job they hate that doesn’t quite cover the bills, or would if they didn’t feel the need to spend $300 on a “boutique” version of the same Tubescreamer that sells for $80. (They all wish they could be Santana, too.)
Music gear guys have made their hobby the centerpoint of their personality. They’re like car guys, but with a belief that they have a great artistic voice that needs to be shared with the world.
The irony is that despite playing guitar for almost a decade, a vast majority have never recorded anything other than a few riffs with their phone. On the rare occasion that they do record something, it is either a fine riff salad or the most generic blues rock you could imagine. It isn’t even fit to soundtrack the sex scene of a cable network drama.
By the way, the music gear guy isn’t limited to guitars and rock music.
They’ve slowly moved towards synthesizers, drum machines and DJ equipment. Despite technology making everything more accessible, they’re still convinced that going analog and forking out a small home downpayment for a Moog synth will give them the edge needed to express their deepest emotions through music.
And the proof is in the pudding. Go to any YouTube music gear tutorial or review. Look at the comments. There are always a few where the commentator makes it about their needs and how this equipment is either A) perfect for them when they’re in the midst of performing or composing, or B) just too limiting for them and what they need.
YouTube has created a new generation of people who no longer need to congregate at music stores or their buddy Steve’s garage once every six months to reminisce about teenage rock stardom. They don’t even need to argue semantics on Ultimate Guitar. This shit’s gone global. Everyone just goes straight to the source to shit on anything and everything.
Now, you might be asking, “Why pick on these weird nerds? They’re not hurting anybody.” And in all honesty, most don’t. But if I could give 15-year-old me a heads up while he was learning his first riffs, or 21-year-old me who just installed Ableton a warning, I’d tell them about the pervasive negative vibe that just kills your inner creativity when reading this stuff. But like moths to a flame, we are drawn to the drama that this type of content creates. A good nerd fight is a good nerd fight, no matter what fandom it’s in.
Rather than inspiring you, these dorks make you feel like a broke loser who needs to spend more money to get better. In reality, the most influential music is most often made with what’s affordable, available, and what other people overlooked for years. No matter if it’s pawn store drum machines creating house and techno music in the 80s, a cracked copy of Fruity Loops, or old guitar pedals everyone ignored when they first came out. Gear nerds do the opposite, and try to find a problem for their solution. How can I fit this $450 vintage synth into every song now that I’m feeling inspired by its tones?
Signs somebody is a music gear guy
Rather than ramble on, we’ve compiled a list of things to look out for when dealing with strangers and loved ones:
• They go on and on about the warmth of tube amps—unprompted.
• They’ve spent a small fortune to record an album that sounds like they ran it through an ’80s cassette player… But not the cool kind.
• They get personally insulted when a music equipment manufacturer offers an entry-level product for beginners, despite themselves only having the technical abilities of a beginner.
• They’ve left comments on every YouTube review video that explains their entire personal artistic vision, but an empty SoundCloud account.
• They sincerely believe boutique guitar pedals are just ‘better’ than the identical mass-manufactured versions that sell for ⅓ the price.
• They lug several thousands of dollars of equipment around to play to a crowd of 5 other gear guys (and 1 guy playing VLTs) at a dive bar.
• They spend more time on forums telling someone they're putting their guitar pedals in the wrong order than actually practicing their pentatonic scales.
• They take multiple pictures of the guitarist’s pedalboard after they’ve finished performing. (Dude, it was IDLES. Calm down.)
• They try answering questions on music equipment forums only to provide the most convoluted answer you’ve ever heard. Complete with incomprehensible MS Paint-quality diagrams.
• They refer to any piece of equipment using terms that would normally be reserved for a romantic partner, such as “a beauty”, “the love of my life”, “my new wife”, or “hopefully my other guitars won’t get jealous”.
• They’ll talk about hiding their expensive new purchase from loved ones instead of practicing financial honesty with them.
•They believe using analog equipment is a way to spiritually disconnect, but will instantly give you a dirty look if you’re using budget equipment.
• They’ve extensively compared the pros and cons of using a coiled cable for their guitar rig.
• They consider the crap they bought off of reverb.com to be the cornerstone of their investment portfolio.
• They’ve mentioned the tonal properties of different woods, or used the term ‘tonewood’, in conversation.
• They sincerely believe Polyphia to be artistically superior to Taylor Swift (or any other woman who plays guitar, for that matter).
• They own every imaginable piece of guitar equipment available, except a metronome.
• They sincerely believe that one extra reverb pedal will make their one-man shoegaze project sound better.
• They subscribe to Rob Chapman or watch rig rundowns while taking notes.
• They could write a thesis about Clapton’s amp setup but casually gloss over his political rantings.
• They believe lofi dawless techno is what the genre is really supposed to be, but have no clue who Underground Resistance is.
• The revelation that J Dilla’s Donuts was made using ProTools rather than just an SP-404 has caused them an irreversible identity crisis.
• They become strangely competitive or smug when discussing music gear preferences, despite you not asking. I don’t give a shit if you prefer a fixed bridge, I simply asked if you had the little blocks for a Floyd Rose available in store.
• They mention that their music would be more appreciated in a past era without realizing they would most likely be shunned from that subculture or simply beaten up.
• Their guitar collection is protected by a prenup agreement.
• They don’t realize that nobody gives a shit if you’re using a whammy bar or not. Truly. No one cares.
• They refuse to acknowledge that Serato exists. They’re also just not smart enough to understand how to use it properly.
• They’ve never realized they’ll never be this guy. Or this guy.
This piece is dedicated to the hardworking asswipe with the greasy ponytail who mans the Jean-Talon Archambault instrument counter.
And also that Spider-Man busker who used to play plastic bucket drums on Ste Catherine Street. You proved that true artistry comes from the heart, not via Interac.